August 04, 2010

Greens Turn to Small-Scale Issues

Climate change wasn’t the only environmental issue on
Congress’s agenda over the past three years — it just seemed that way.

With the cap-and-trade bill dead in the Senate, lawmakers and environmental
groups are looking to shine the spotlight on a slew of problems that received
almost no attention in recent years, such as acid rain, overfishing, polluted
drinking water and toxic chemicals in consumer products.

“It’s quite obvious for the last several years that the climate debate has
sucked up all the oxygen from other environmental issues,” said Frank
O’Donnell, president of the nonprofit group Clean Air Watch. “After the
fighting and exhaustion of climate, there are a lot of other issues waiting in
the queue.”

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In the coming year, environmentalists and their friends in Congress are likely
to focus on smaller, more bang-for-your-buck environmental bad guys: discrete
pollutants produced by only one sector or industry that have an immediate
impact on human health — and are more accessible in the minds of voters.

Similar smaller-scale environmental issues are also on the
move. On Tuesday, Boxer chaired a hearing on regulating environmental toxins
that could contribute to autism. Last week, House Democrats Ed Markey of
Massachusetts and Jan Schakowsky of Illinois introduced a bill that would for
the first time regulate toxic chemicals in personal products, such as makeup
and deodorant. And House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman
(D-Calif.) has a plan to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act, which
regulates industrial chemicals in consumer products and hasn’t seen an overhaul
in 32 years.

“This is something people connect to immediately. This is something where
industrial pollution occurs in the womb,” said Ken Cook, president of the
Environmental Working Group, which is pushing Congress to revisit many of these
smaller-scale pollutant issues.

Cook also sees an opening in the next couple of years to strengthen the Safe
Drinking Water Act. Lawmakers in the Northeast fear that drinking water
supplies are being contaminated as companies inject toxic chemicals in the
ground to extract new supplies of natural gas. Western members are grappling
with perchlorate, a chemical used in rocket flares that has contaminated water
supplies in California and Nevada, where the Defense Department has dumped
rocket equipment.

To some environmental groups that have devoted countless hours, media campaigns
and lobbying expenditures over the past years to tackle climate change, a new
focus on a handful of smaller issues seems depressing — an acknowledgement of
the defeat on the biggest issue of all.

But Cook said it could also offer an opportunity to build new momentum and
coalitions before the inevitable return of the climate debate.

“If you build in the American people’s mind the idea that Congress is taking on
environmental issues one at a time, if you have a successful run politically —
that could make it easier to build up support the next time you come back to
this,” he said.